Mary Nnah
Aksara Foundation, a non-for-profit organisation that seeks to educate and empower 21st century girl has begun the journey to actualise its vision and inspiration by donating to Iyana Ipaja Girls Junior Grammar School a refurbished ICT room set up, over 20 computers, security wall set up, air conditioners and scholarship for four students.
The foundation still in its infancy and conceptualisation phase, took the initiative to raise the 21th century leaders in public school in Nigeria by refurbishing the dilapidated computer room and expand it therefore, equipping the school with over 20 modern computer sets.
Speaking at the commissioning of the computer room and other donations to the school, Mrs. Gulnar Vaswani, founder of Aksara Foundation, said that the foundation is seeking to redefine how students view leadership, and are being taught to face the 21st century challenges rather than the usual curriculum that is not, in her opinion, adequately preparing for the students for the future they will inherit.
She said: “Aksara Foundation is talking about competencies, skills, learnings and paradigms that are not covered by most curriculums either at the university level or undergraduate level or high school level or junior high level.”
“We think that there are other drivers of success that education is not capturing. We want to help build those skills, talents and competencies and make the students understand that they are all leaders and they all have untapped potential to give whether they are A, B, C or D students it doesn’t matter,” she enthused.
Speaking on the choice of the school, elated Vaswani who vowed to continue to give back to school with appropriate maintenance discipline said, “the selection of the school was based on appropriate numbers of students, it must be a public school, decent security record and to kick start with school within our area of operation, which is Ikeja in Lagos.”
She said: “Selection started with when we said we wanted to partner with a school that has maximum of number of students and schools around our head office. Because we are in Ikeja and we tour schools around Ikeja and Agege axis and we found this school- Iyana Ipaja Junior Girls Grammar School, which is a big school with a large number of students and we choose help this school.”
She thanked the principal, the vice principal and the school management for giving us the opportunity to serve them.
On the scholarship given to four students of the school, the Askara Foundation boss said, to ensure that these students get their educational support, they are required to submit their results at the end of every term in order to assess their performances.”
